Employees Shelve Paper Work and Don Spikes for Road Race

When inter-office departments clash on the athletic field, pride and team spirit can sometimes surface more than in the workplace.

But when corporations do battle against other corporations in recreational team events, that spirit can rally office unity from the mail room to the board room.

“You take pride in your team,” said Eric Wenner, a senior distribution analyst with Mattel Toys in Hawthorne and a member of Mattel’s road-racing team.

Mattel’s crew is competing in tonight’s Los Angeles leg of the Manufacturers Hanover Corporate Challenge, a nationwide series of 3.5-mile road races. Race time is 7 p.m. at Griffith Park.

The race is open to full-time employees of corporations, businesses, government and financial institutions. It is billed as the largest participatory sporting event series in the U.S., with more than 100,000 runners from 5,000 companies taking the starter’s blocks last year.

Some companies have taken up race preparations in earnest, and Mattel is one of them.

“This is the big show. This is our Super Bowl,” says Alden Wilsey, a pattern shop supervisor with Mattel and returning veteran of last year’s race.

Interest has risen steadily among Team Mattel. Last year 10 runners showed up for the event. Tonight there will be 28.

The squad has gone so far as to take up informal team training, utilizing a vacant high school track just behind the company offices. Even the company president, Bob Sansone, was fixing to put on the sweats and spikes until an important meeting came up. “But he would have run if the race was earlier in the day,” said Wilsey.

Mattel’s runners are trying to catch the only Los Angeles champion the Challenge has ever known: Steve Bishop, an employee with Rockwell International in Anaheim and the course record holder. Bishop set the mark of 16.23 last year and has won every series event in L.A. since it’s inaugural run in 1983.

“The aerospace industry--Hughes, Rockwell, Jet Propulsion Lab, TRW--they all seem to do real well every year. Maybe those engineers know the mechanics of their mind,” said Heather Hellman, the public relations director for the race.

But Mattel is toying with the idea of flying by the aerospace crews and all others this year. Says Mike Charmello, a senior financial analyst and a member of last year’s squad: “We’ve been training all year and everyone has been training hard for the last month. Once that gun goes off, and the adrenaline gets pumping, we want to beat everybody.”

Charmello, Wenner, Wilsey, senior marketing and research analyst Alex Puchner and sculpting manager Tom Conners led the five-man Mattel contingent last year, and all will represent the company again tonight. The top five men’s times and top three women’s times are combined for the total team times, although the number of entrants from one company is unlimited.

Wenner has been scouring different departments for recruits, but he also has been encouraging the active members to keep training.

“Whenever I see them in the hall, I say, ‘How’s it going? Are you training hard? Are you ready? There’s going to be a lot of people chasing you,’ ” he said.

If the pre-race reports can offer a guideline, lots of runners may be in the chase behind the Mattel crew. Wenner and Wilsey have been running regularly for several years, and Charmello and Conners have taken up the sport with more zest since the Challenge became a race to work toward. Puchner, an accomplished cyclist and runner, may be the best of the lot. And Karen Hoffman, a design analyst and longtime distance runner (“I’ve been working on my speed work.”) bolsters the women racers.

But the cliche about winning not being everything is not lost on the corporate world.

Said Wenner: “I’ve run in quite a few races, and this one is really different. In a way, it’s like we’re in high school again. Every team is showing their (uniform) colors, keeping race secrets. You get nervous for you and your team.”

And combining the words individual and team may be the most important victory the race can award. “When we get done, there’s a big party. There’s a closeness after the race among all of us,” said Charmello. “It also helps the company because we are building working relationships which carry over into our jobs.”

Or, as senior executive secretary and first-time racer Kim Bradnam puts it: “There’s a lot of pride behind the Barbie logo.”